Casey's Contradiction
by frecklemaggie
Summary: She loved him, yes, but only because he was so much fun to hate.


I hate him.

Sometimes, I'm not exactly sure of the reason. Sometimes he infuriates me to no end, and it certainly feels like I hate him. Sometimes he can get me so angry and hurting and the only thing I want to do is ring his scrawny, beautiful neck…

But sometimes, I feel something so different when I look at him and fight with him; it's so powerful and so different from hate, and yet it's very much the same.

Sometimes I think of him in ways I shouldn't.

Sometimes _something _runs fast through my veins, but it's not really hate. I just _wish _it was hate so I won't feel bad later for thinking anything other than what I should be thinking.

There has always been a fine line between love and hate, and I believe I am walking it.

Because sometimes, I think I hate him so much because I am completely in love with him.

But, hey, Casey always has to make _everything_ so damn complicated. Why should my love life be any different?

I've heard of love/hate relationships. I've read about them in a million different novels, seen them acted out in hundreds of plays and movies. I've swooned over every love/hate relationship in the book.

This is more than just love/hate, though. This is also stepbrother/stepsister. This is something _normal_ non-Casey people think is disgusting. This is something that he would laugh at and then never speak about again. If fact, if I ever said anything about the way I feel about him, he would probably never talk to me again. He would think I was a dirty, awful, sick-o.

This is just a love/hate relationship on the side.

I do hate him, though, so much. It's just not a _regular_ kind of hate.

It's not the kind of hate that I never want to see him again or speak to him or just the thought of him makes me sick, because I doubt that I could ever hate him like that again.

It's more of the kind of hate that makes me ache all over more than anything.

It's the kind of hate that I hate what he does to me and what I feel for him. I hate that I think of him all the time and that I find myself thinking of him more and more and that my feelings sometimes feel like they are getting out of hand.

The kind of hate that makes me hates me more than him.

So, really, in a twisted kind of fate, it's a self-hate. Hating him makes me hate myself.

But, hey, everyone else seems to hates me, so really I'm just jumping on the big, ol' let's hate Casey wagon.

I hate him because he makes me hate myself. Before him, I was confident in myself and I knew myself and I loved myself. I knew where I was going and how I was going to get there. Casey was not a person that I had to reassure myself about.

It was everyone around me I couldn't depend on.

But now, with him, it's like everything I do is wrong. I freaking fall in love with him, with my _stepbrother._ Casey is not someone I know, now. He turned me into a stranger.

I hate him because he made me into someone I hate.

And I hate myself because I love him.

How did everything get so _twisted_?

I used to be able to sort things out, and make lists and any problem I had I could easily fix it through a series of quick thinking and easy logic.

But neither love nor hate has any sort of logic.

My own emotions are not tangible; they are flinty, obscure things that I cannot understand anymore. I cannot simply "fix" this problem. I cannot simply say, "Hey, I don't want to love my stepbrother anymore," and then it would be so.

I cannot just _fix_ this. Loving him is something that will confuse and undermine me for the rest of my life.

And he did this all to me! He put this perplexity and uncertainty in my straight-edged and ruled-based life!

I hate him for that, too. He totally ruined rules for me. Because, with him, there are none.

I used to think that I was the exception to _his _rule. The rule that says every female on the planet _will_ fall madly in love with him. The rule that says no one can say _no_ to him. The rule that says he's _irresistible._

I used to tell myself that I was the one exception to his rules, mainly because I was Casey once. I was _just_ his stepsister once, and once, I even had a little dignity.

The main word in that sentence was _had_. I no longer am a person that simply lives in the same house and goes to the same school as him and sometimes happens to breathe the same air as him. I no longer am an exception to his rule.

I may still live in the same house as him, and go to the same school as him, and occasionally breathe the same air as him, but everything is changed. I am no longer indifferent to these facts. I no longer take advantage of times when I am close enough I can smell his cologne, or when I walk into his room and his shirt is off.

I no longer am just _there,_ because I _want _to be there. I _want_ to be with him, breathing his same air and enjoying his annoying, obnoxious, _perfect_ personality.

I once believed that I only hated him because I hated him, and that I did not need him in my life. Heck, I once believed that my life would have so much better had he never been in it.

When I was six, I used to also believe pigs could fly, too.

Because that's how ridiculous _living without him s_eems to me now. How could I _live_ without seeing his face every morning, or hearing him whine and call me 'princess' and rag on me on how I ruin _everything_?

How could I live without hearing Emily swoon over him during lunch, or without Marti telling me how he's the absolute best big brother?

How could I live without those sweet moments when he actually is nice to me, those rare few times when he is actually considerate of me, with feelings and everything?

How could I believe that my life would have been much, much better had my mother never met George, and I had never met Derek Venturi, and I had never fell crazy, loony, and idiotically in love with him?

I hate him so much more than possible. I hate that I'll never be with him, I hate that he makes me feel this way, I hate that he confuses me and makes me want him and that he will probably never know _any _of it. I hate that he has to be my step brother, and that I can never do anything about these feelings that seem to consume me.

I hate that I love him so, _so _much more than I hate him.

But really, how can I not be in love with him? Derek Venturi is just so much freaking _fun_ to hate.

* * *

A/N: God, I love Dasey. I could totally read/write it the rest of my life. Anyone who agrees with me should review. :)

Oh, and I totally do no own anything of this goodness. It all belongs to whoever it belongs to, I suppose. Although I wouldn't mind owning LWD...


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